


In everything there is balance

by josephides



Category: Alpha and Omega - Patricia Briggs, Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: F/M, mercy pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:21:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26525131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephides/pseuds/josephides
Summary: The shark smile came back, briefly, and then disappeared. Leah’s eyes were suddenly fathomless. Mercy had trouble meeting them so she glanced away. “Let’s just say I am very invested in the success of your relationship.”
Relationships: Adam Hauptman/Mercy Thompson, Leah Cornick & Mercy Thompson, minor Bran Cornick/Leah Cornick
Comments: 15
Kudos: 76





	In everything there is balance

Mercy put down the tools of her trade and gave up. At least, temporarily. She’d take another look tomorrow morning with fresh eyes and if that didn’t get her the results she was hoping for, she was going to have to ask Tad to look at it, see if it was something his magic could glean. And then if _that_ didn’t work, she might call Zee and see if he was in the mood for a tricky customer.

So thinking, Mercy rolled her creeper out from under the most frustrating car she’d had in many months and stood up to stretch her sore body, wondering at the discomfort she felt. A glance at the clock told her why she was aching so much – she’d been under the T-Cross for nearly three hours. 

She hadn’t noticed the time passing. It had been a slow day – no calls or unexpected customers, just plenty of time to focus on a difficult problem. Tad had timed his day off well.

Stomach rumbling, Mercy went to check the refrigerator in the office, on the off chance that there might be some edible leftovers that would stifle her hung pangs until she got home for dinner. It was Taco Tuesday in the Hauptman household – a tradition that had been established for, oh, approximately three weeks now as Aiden had recently become obsessed with Mexican cooking. They had been using cooking as one of the ways to improve his reading skills and he’d really taken to it like a duck to water. The pack were regular guinea pigs to his latest creations. Not that Mercy was going to complain about that, no siree, and she wanted to leave plenty of room for whatever he had stewed up as fillings for that evening’s fiesta.

The refrigerator was disappointingly empty except for a half-finished bottle of kombucha – not hers – so she pulled open the drawers of her filing cabinet. Sometimes she stashed… “Ah-hah!” she said, triumphantly pulling a chocolate bar from the folder where she kept her miscellaneous receipts.

Before she unwrapped it and chowed down, Mercy went to wash and scrub her hands in the bathroom, resigned to the knowledge that a quiet day meant she should at least get some paperwork done in the last hour or so before she headed home for the night. Tad would be delighted if she at least cleared a few invoices. So would her bank account.

Mercy stepped out from the bathroom, hands clean as they were going to get, and knew immediately she now had company. In an instinct instilled in her by many years of experience, she glanced at the security screen. It was a woman, one who managed, by dint of standing in the one blind spot in the shop, to avoid having her face to a camera.

Not a coincidence, Mercy thought, chewing her bottom lip.

It had not been so long since Fiona had caught and cornered her in her own place of work, not been so long since Adam’s monster had chowed down on her neck. But, with resignation, and a healthy jolt of old fear, Mercy recognized this woman. Recognized the shape of her physique, the restless, predatory body language of a werewolf. The expensive shoes.

She stepped out of the office, chocolate bar clenched in her hand, and faced her childhood tormenter.

“Hello, Mercy,” Leah Cornick said, smiling like a shark.

*

“Smile for the cameras, Mercedes,” Leah’s shark-mouth said to her, waving at one of the more obvious ones, the one that announced _You’re Being Watched_. “Let your husband know that I’m not here to hurt you.”

Truth.

“Or kill me?” Mercy asked, bluntly, shoving the chocolate bar into the pocket of her overalls.

“Or kill you,” the woman, who had tried many times to kill her in the past, promised truthfully. “I’m here on a mission of… goodwill, shall we say.”

This seemed incredibly unlikely. Nevertheless, Mercy turned to look at a camera and gave a thumbs up. Since she had also become a target of the Hardesty witches, who were still at large, she knew Adam had pretty much a live feed of the shop set up on his computer at work. Either Leah knew that – how? – or she simply knew how the mind of an Alpha werewolf worked.

Given Leah was mated to the head honcho, she imagined it was the latter.

“Does Adam know you’re here?” Mercy felt for sure that he would have mentioned a visit from the wicked witch of the west. Though that wasn’t why she was asking. Dominant werewolves from other packs had to make a courtesy call to the Alpha of a territory, if their own Alphas didn’t do it for them. They couldn’t just turn up unannounced.

Leah started to move around the shop, leaving the blind spot that she had apparently spotted now that Mercy had given her the all-clear. “Mmm. Now that rule only really applies to men, Mercy,” she said, peering into cars, on shelves, the high heels of her boots quiet on the concrete.

That was surely splitting hairs. “Cesar’s wife should be above suspicion,” Mercy said through her teeth. It was a quote Bran had often used, one that she knew would annoy Leah because it always had done when he had said it to Leah.

It achieved the desired effect. Leah’s blue eyes turned to regard her hotly. “ _Cesar_ knows it applies to men. It is a technicality he has never felt needed to be addressed given there are so few dominant females who would stray from their packs alone. And he doesn’t know I’m here, either.”

A flare of alarm went through Mercy. She knew it was ridiculous. She was – like Leah – an Alpha’s mate now. She had more power than the child she had once been, at the mercy of Leah’s malicious whims. She could stand her own ground. She didn’t need to be afraid. She had met far scarier creatures than Leah Cornick now.

“Why are you here, Leah?” she asked through gritted teeth, trying to imbue a sense of confidence in her words and if not confidence then anger worked just as well.

“I’m here because you need help.” Leah paused in the window of the office, having done a full circuit of the shop. She was no more than three yards away from Mercy. She was wearing skin-tight blue jeans and a tight white T-shirt tucked into the waistband. Plain as they both were, Leah’s designer shopping habit was legendary so she had no doubt they were high end brands. She had a leather jacket draped over her shoulders, the kind of leather that looked buttery-soft, its scent lingering in the air. “I hear you are having problems with the bond between you and your mate.”

Mercy frowned. There was nothing _wrong_ with it. “You hear wrong.”

Leah held up an imperious finger. “Let me rephrase. I hear… that your mate can shut you out of the bond whenever he wants. Regardless of your feelings on the matter.”

Mercy felt the sick twist of a secret she didn’t want sharing being revealed. Did Bran tell her? It seemed so unlikely. She remembered well the screaming arguments she’d witnessed between Bran and Leah about her. More likely Leah had quite literally overheard something – which was careless of Bran.

“What goes on between my mate and me is private,” Mercy said sharply. She almost winced at the vulnerability she heard in her own voice. Leah had always attacked her where she was most vulnerable and the fear that she would never be _werewolf_ enough was one of Leah’s preferred targets.

Leah watched her for a moment. Then she sighed and the restless tension in her body seemed to ebb. “He thought it would be destabilizing to have made you a member of our pack. He was right.” Mercy didn’t need to know who ‘he’ was. An old pain made itself known in her chest, one she didn’t want Leah to know she had. Leah continued, regardless. “There were wolves with fragile minds who would not have coped well with a coyote amongst us. It had nothing to do with you personally.”

Mercy scoffed. She couldn’t help it.

“Did I tell a lie?” Leah’s head tilted to the side. “I did not. You have always been very black and white. The Aspen Creek pack is old, too old for the likes of you. But, I divert from my point. You have no doubt been told that pack bonds, mating bonds, are instinctive to us wolves. Am I right?”

Hesitantly, Mercy nodded. She had. 

The shark-like smile returned. “Now that, my dear, is a very big lie.”

 _My dear?_ “It is?”

“Absolutely. The bonds are instinctive to men and men alone. The Alpha instigates them and we, the female, receive them. A tale as old as time.” Suddenly, Leah paused to run a finger over the window outside her office. She grimaced at the dirt. “This needs dusting, Mercy.”

“Cleaner’s day off,” Mercy said, dryly, not interested in being distracted. Despite herself, she was intrigued about what Leah was saying, even if part of her wondered if it was some fantasy Leah had cooked up to embarrass her. To demonstrate how _not-werewolf_ Mercy was once again. “The other females in our pack don’t have a problem.”

Lips pursed, Leah rubbed her fingers together to rid herself of the dirt. She had a very neat manicure – but no polish. There was no point if you were going to Change frequently and Leah did. On her wedding finger was a sparkling engagement ring and matching wedding band of blue and white stones. Mercy was no expert but she presumed they were diamonds and sapphires. That was new, she thought. Then again, it had been a long time since she had seen Leah in her human form.

“The other females in your pack are either mated, to a werewolf male, or came from a pack with an Alpha female who taught them. If you had been integrated into our pack, it would have been my job to teach you about the mating bond.”

What a horrifying thought, one they both seemed to appreciate. Leah winced as much as Mercy did.

“But since you weren’t, and it would have never crossed my mind that you would ever mate with a werewolf–” This, Mercy felt, was a partial untruth, “–that never happened to you and your mate was last married to that human and is barely half a century old himself. Practically a baby. I really will have to clean this.” She shrugged out of her very expensive leather jacket, casting her eye about for somewhere to put it and then decided to err on the side of caution and drape it over an arm. “Where do you keep your cleaning products?”

“Er.” Mercy blinked, unsure, but Leah seemed to be serious and was waiting expectantly.

Well, she wasn’t about to turn down free cleaning. _She_ didn’t care that the window ledge was apparently dusty. She felt no sense of shame, either, if that was Leah’s point. Mercy knew that Leah ran the big manor house where she lived with Bran like a military operation. Dust would not be permitted to gather in any inch of Leah’s house. Mercy was not that kind of person. Customers expected a garage to be dirty. Part of its charm.

She fetched the bucket of cleaning products she kept in the office and deposited them at Leah’s feet. She pointed at a hook for her to hang her expensive jacket up. Then Leah pulled on a pair of yellow plastic gloves and, as she did so, she cast Mercy’s permanently grimy hands a smirk. “I imagine you’ve felt no drive to learn, either,” Leah continued, as if this was a very normal conversation they were having. She wiped down the surfaces with a duster first, then crouched down to investigate the bottles of cleaning products.

Refusing to stick her permanently dirty hands in the pockets of her overalls, Mercy instead crossed her arms. “I guess not.”

“Is that normal for you? _Not_ learning about something?”

“I— well.” Mercy hesitated _again_. This day was becoming weirder and weirder. “Not really,” she said, thoughtfully. For the first time, it sounded kind of lame to her. “I guess I thought he had more experience. It’s normally fine. It _is_ fine.”

The bond between her and Adam had gone back to normal. For the most part. Adam sometimes had bad days, she thought. Not days when the monster returned, more like days when the memory of it returned and with it his desire to shield her from his thoughts and feelings. It usually passed. She just had to wait it out and he reopen the bond enough to be comfortable. Sometimes more than comfortable.

Leah sprayed the surface with cleaner, then wiped it down. She stepped back to look at the window, wrinkled her neat little nose, and picked up the glass cleaner next. Mercy was _not_ ashamed at the grime that was coming off – she had been _busy_ – but perhaps she did need to look at getting some help again.

In the office, Mercy’s cell phone started ringing, the tone that she had programmed for Adam. “I should get that,” she muttered.

“Be my guest,” Leah said, gesturing dismissively with her hand in that autocratic way she had. The Aspen Creek pack had often had not-necessarily-pleasant nick-names for her – _queen bitch_ was one of them. _Her Highness_ was another. This was why.

Mercy escaped into the office, instinct not allowing her to turn her back on Leah as she picked up the phone. Hard to look coolly casual and unbothered when you were walking sideways like a crab. She closed the door behind her. It wouldn’t stop all sound from travelling but it would certainly help.

“Is that _Leah Cornick_?” her husband asked.

“Mmm-hmm,” she replied, pretending to study an unfinished invoice.

“Is she… are you all right?” Adam’s tone softened. He knew a few things about her time growing up in the Marrok’s pack. 

“So far.”

“Okay. If you need anything, let me know. I love you,” he added, as he had done so more frequently since the monster.

“I love you, too.”

Mercy hung up the phone. Leah started cleaning the glass of the office door, a frowning ‘v’ in the middle of her forehead, as if the dirt personally offended her.

*

Mercy made herself an instant hot chocolate. Leah accepted a bottle of water. She had moved on to cleaning the inside of the office now and Mercy sat at her desk, attempting to do paperwork. She had left the door open so she could escape if she wanted to.

“Does it make money? This venture of yours?”

“When I remember to invoice people,” Mercy said, ignoring the vaguely disparaging tones in Leah’s voice. _Venture_. Like it was a hobby.

“Hmm,” Bran’s mate said doubtfully as she cleaned the insides of the windows.

Leah had never worked a day in her life, of course. Not that being the Alpha female of the Aspen Creek pack wasn’t work, in fairness. There was always something going on and unlike her own pack, often it was the members of the Aspen Creek pack who were the problem.

Leah had her fingers in most of the lives of the wolves and families of wolves in that pack. It had taken years before Mercy had remembered but it had been Leah who had organized all of Evelyn’s healthcare, albeit begrudgingly. Leah who had organized Bryan’s funeral and terrified everyone into attending, even if some in the pack had viewed suicide as the ‘easy’ way out from the pain of losing his mate.

She hosted most of the social occasions, as well, which were more complex than putting a video game on and baking piles of brownies. Bran had held big meetings in the pole barn. Mercy had always been expressly forbidden from going up to the big house on those days but had seen the catering vans coming and going, feeding the hoards of hungry werewolves.

And, knowing what she now knew about being married to an Alpha, living with Bran was probably not easy, either.

Mercy actually knew nothing about Leah _before_ she had become a werewolf. She had been born in the late 18th Century and life as a woman was different then. Maybe Leah had been born into a family with servants, expected to live the life of wealthy man’s wife. Which was essentially what she was. Just with more violence and bloodshed.

She glanced at Leah out of the corner of her eye, thinking about what she had said about the mating bond. “I would have thought Bran would have mentioned it.”

Leah, who was kneeling to clean the baseboards, rotated on her heels to give Mercy a very speaking look. “When has my mate ever delivered advice in a manner easily understood?”

Mercy smiled reflexively. _Blow up the bond_ , Bran had said, as if that had made sense. And then refused to explain what that meant, forcing her to interpret it her way. It had worked, of course, but a few more descriptive words could have removed her worries.

“Besides, he’s a man, and one who likes control. It suits him to propagate the myth. It only bothers him that Adam manipulates the bond because it’s _you_.” This last was delivered in a nasty tone of voice. As if Mercy was a piece of dirt on the point of her expensive boots.

“Adam doesn’t…” Mercy put down her pen and breathed deeply, feeling the tension in the small office begin to grow. She was glad she had left the door open. “Adam has his reasons.”

“I’m sure he does. But if you stopped speaking to him for no reason he could discern, would he be so reasonable?”

Mercy pulled a face. “No, of course not. He’s a werewolf.”

“So there you go. That’s an imbalance, isn’t it?” Leah rinsed her cloth. She moved further along, pushing a filing cabinet out of the way like it weighed nothing. Even Mercy winced at the dust that had collected behind it. She swore, after this, she would have someone come in once a month to keep on top of things. “After a while, you’ll resent him for it. His ability to take away something you see as necessary to completing you without your say-so.”

Mercy had an inkling Leah spoke from personal experience. There was not a chance in heck she was going to ask questions about that, however.

“So, what, you’ve come here to teach me?” Suspicious didn’t even cover how Mercy felt about this. 

“I thought it seemed prudent. I would imagine you don’t have the kind of relationship with the other females in your pack that would allow for that discussion.” Leah caught Mercy’s expression – something that fell between irritation and hurt – and rolled her eyes. “Don’t be dramatic. You’re the Alpha’s mate. You _shouldn’t_ have that kind of relationship. You’re the boss. You’re the one who should be cascading information.”

That wasn’t really how Mercy saw it. 

“Besides, Mary-Jo is unmated. Honey is recently widowed.” Leah shrugged. “And Aurielle is a massive pain in the ass.”

Mercy’s mouth dropped open. She wasn’t sure what was more astonishing – that Leah knew the women in her pack by name or that she also thought Aurielle was a pain in the ass.

Because she was the ‘boss’, as Leah put it, Mercy felt duty bound to defend her pack-mate. “She’s… having a difficult time.”

Leah made an annoyed noise. “Oh, please, she’s always been a pain in the ass.”

For the first time in her life, Mercy experienced a rare moment of kinship with Leah Cornick. The world was, clearly, about to end.

“Do you want to come for dinner? At ours?” Mercy said, the words coming out of her mouth from nowhere and she was apparently helpless to stop them. 

Leah moved the filing cabinet back with the tip of one finger, as if this offer had both been expected and wanted. “How lovely. I’d be delighted.”

Mercy looked out of the window, wondering what form the obviously oncoming apocalypse was going to take. 

*

Leah followed Mercy home in her gunmetal grey Lexus. When Mercy pulled into her drive and cut the engine, she heard the strains of loud, contemporary rock music blaring from Leah’s speakers. Because apparently Leah listened to music now, too. 

“What an attractive house,” Leah said, looking up at the house and around the front yard with appreciative eyes.

Mercy, who had nothing to do with the sprawling property that was now her home, nodded. “Thanks.”

Inside, Aiden was in the kitchen, looking anxiously into one of the pots on the stove. He’d already started to lay the table with the different sides that accompanied the meal and the whole kitchen smelled amazing. Mercy’s mouth watered in anticipation. Meanwhile, _Aiden’s_ mouth dropped open when she introduced Leah and a pink, flushed color crept up his cheeks.

Uh oh, Mercy thought.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Leah drawled, holding out her hand. "I've heard _so much_ about you."

Aiden – who had lived with fae for a long, long time but was now, if only in appearance, a teenage boy experiencing teenage boy hormones – stammered a greeting. Then looked cross. Mercy could practically hear him scolding himself. 

It was very easy for Mercy to forget, surrounded as she had been her entire life by preternaturally attractive werewolf females, but Leah Cornick was probably a step up from most. As a child, she’d often been told the romantic story of Bran’s first mate, Charles’s mother, a woman so beautiful Bran had fallen in love with her at first sight. No one mentioned that his second mate could also stop traffic should she choose to. Maybe because it was something of which Leah was so clearly aware. Mercy had seen many a man falter at the flick of Leah’s hair over her shoulder. Once or twice, she had even seen _Bran_ falter.

Mercy snorted to herself. Bran, who had apparently searched ‘far and wide’ for his next choice of mate, someone who wouldn’t emotionally challenge him, had certainly still wanted someone who was easy on the eyes.

Easy to forget that Bran was ‘just’ a man too, Mercy thought. Then she shuddered a little inside, as she always had if she thought too much about Bran and Leah together. Yuck. 

Feeling like she was setting Aiden up, Mercy left them together, leaving Leah asking a series of intensive questions about the meal, whilst she went up to the bedroom to change. Adam would be home, hopefully, in a few minutes and she had sent him a message explaining their surprise dinner guest. She hadn’t as of yet explained _why_ Leah was visiting. She wasn’t absolutely certain how she was going to. Not yet. 

Mercy _might_ have put on a nicer sweater than the T-shirts she would normally wear at home. She might also have put on a clean pair of jeans. She _maybe_ took a little more time with her hair and scrubbing under her nails. Maybe. She stopped short of actually putting make-up on because she reserved that for truly special occasions with Adam, not just her childhood nemesis.

Mercy returned to the kitchen just as Adam came home. He was wearing smart pants and a dark blue shirt, open at the collar, and carrying the matching jacket. Meetings with bigwigs today, then. He was still, perhaps, a shade thinner than Mercy would like but the blue of his shirt brought out the blue of his eyes, the darkness of his hair. He looked unspeakably handsome.

“Leah Cornick, welcome to my territory,” he was saying, lifting his eyebrows with the slightest hint of chastisement. _Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?_ was the unspoken question.

Leah smiled, warm and friendly, though she would have caught this tone easily. “Thank you, Adam Hauptman. It is a pleasure to be here. I’m just passing through.” _I’m not staying long,_ she implied. “I’m breaking my journey at the Lodge tonight.” _See. I’m not even expecting to stay with you. Instead my very wealthy husband is paying for a night at the most expensive hotel in the area._

Adam smiled. “Well, we’re delighted to have you for dinner. May I get you a drink?”

“I’ll do that,” Mercy said, hurriedly stepping into the kitchen properly to be a hostess. “You go up and change.” She lifted her head for the expected kiss, received it, and smiled at her husband, giving him her best ‘this is freaky weird' eyes. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Adam said, his smile changing from the polite one he had served Leah to the warm one he reserved just for her. Yup, she still got butterflies.

He patted her butt as he went upstairs and she grinned.

Past experience had taught Mercy that Leah liked people’s relationships to be as contentious as hers apparently was, but when she looked up, instead of the annoyed and jealous expression she expected, the other woman wore a pleased smile.

Odd.

Since they were ‘on a theme’, she offered Leah a _cerveza_ , whereas she stuck to Coke.

Mercy could hear some of the pack were downstairs, playing a new video game which didn’t have pirates – ultimately less interesting to Mercy. In any case, she did her duty as the Alpha’s mate and took Leah down to introduce them, since they would be staying for dinner.

Ben, Warren and Sherwood all stood when Leah entered. Both Ben and Warren looked faintly dumbstruck – no doubt they’d heard tales of Bran’s vicious mate. Ben even managed not to swear.

To Mercy’s surprise, Sherwood smiled broadly and came to embrace Leah. “Madam Marrok,” he murmured.

Of course. He had been with Bran, briefly.

Leah laughed and it was pleasant and friendly. “Sherwood. It’s good to see you. And looking so well, too. But why… do you smell like a cat?” She wrinkled her nose.

Sherwood’s smile seemed to broaden. “Because I have one.” From his pocket, he pulled a cell phone and proceeded to show Leah photos of Pirate like a proud father.

Leah laughed again. It was warm and so utterly alien, Mercy could do nothing but blink. “You’re ridiculous,” she said. “But he’s very handsome. For a feline.”

At least, Mercy thought, that had solved who Leah would sit next to at dinner.

*

Mercy had often respected Bran’s ability to ‘blend’ in with werewolf packs, as if he wasn’t a great Power in the world and instead was just part of the scenery. Part of that was his appearance, the youthful face and college-boy floppy hair, his scruffy clothes. Part of it was magic. But part of it was definitely his charm.

It had never, ever occurred to Mercy that Leah might have charm, too. That she could switch off the werewolf queen attitude and suddenly become this sparkling dinner guest who asked thoughtful questions and passed the salsa and stacked plates and thanked Aiden repeatedly for an excellent meal. Who told funny stories about Bran and the Aspen Creek pack and pulled expressive faces that made everyone at the table who _hadn’t_ grown up with her tormenting them look at her with delight.

Who the heck was this woman? Mercy wondered, even as she found herself smiling at some of the stories she hadn’t heard before.

At one point, Mercy exchanged a speaking look with Adam who, at least, looked equally perplexed and reassuringly hadn’t fallen into Leah’s trap like everyone else. He put his hand on her knee and squeezed.

After dinner, everyone who didn’t live in their house went back to their respective homes with a chorus of ‘thank you’s. Leah stood outside for a few minutes, having a quiet conversation with Sherwood that both Mercy and Adam unashamedly observed from the kitchen window whilst they washed and dried the few dishes that didn’t go in the dishwasher.

“It’s like she was possessed,” Mercy whispered, as Leah put a hand on Sherwood’s upper arm and frowned at something he said.

“Maybe this is just what she’s like when she’s not in Aspen Creek.” Her husband slanted his eyes to her, as if judging how well she would receive this comment.

“What, so her personality totally changes away from home?”

Adam nodded. “Maybe we all do when we’re away from our responsibilities.”

It was hard to reconcile this with what Mercy knew of Leah, though. Everything Mercy had known was related to her time in Aspen Creek when Leah had made Mercy’s life hell. Imagining that just stepping out of the small town would make a difference seemed unlikely. 

This led to the thought that it had been a while since either Adam or she had been away from their own responsibilities. A few hours during their honeymoon, perhaps. It had been nice.

“We should do that, sometime,” Mercy said, nudging her husband with her hip. Maybe chose a place of their own, rather than somewhere recommended by a tricksy fae.

Adam nudged her back, then suddenly slung an arm about her shoulders and gave her a long slow kiss, the sort of kiss that, had they been alone, would have led to Mercy dragging him up to their bedroom. But they weren’t alone.

So thinking, Adam sighed fulsomely and let her go. “We should,” he agreed, returning to his pile of the dishes.

Outside, Leah tossed back her head and laughed.

Mercy leaned against her husband’s side. “I don’t think Bran knows she’s here, by the way.” 

“Huh,” he replied, putting away the dish he was holding.

Since Adam’s assertion in his otherness that he was sometimes jealous of Bran, Mercy tried not to bring him up too much. She trod carefully. “Do you think that is going to be a problem? With him?”

Adam shrugged. “He’s not my boss any more. And it’s their business. I’m not about to intervene. Besides, apparently she’s just ‘passing through’,” he repeated, with a knowing smirk.

Leah came back inside and, in front of Adam, her expression was still bright and open. “I don’t suppose you have a phone charger I could use? I left mine at the hotel and this is nearly dead.” She held up her cell phone between two fingers, as if its battery discharging was a fault of its own. 

Mercy made to gesture to the side-table, where normally two or three phone chargers were plugged into the wall. Except, of course, now they had a teenage boy in the house who suddenly had a peer group and seemed to snap up phone chargers like they were going out of fashion. Consequentially, the wall socket was empty again.

Sighing, Mercy dried her hands and nodded to the hall. “In the office.”

The ‘office’ was ostensibly Adam’s home office, though he only occasionally used it, preferring instead to leave work at his real office rather than bring it home. Medea was sitting in Adam’s leather chair, one of her favorite places, and looked up resentfully when they entered.

“Another cat,” Leah said, shaking her head. “Yours?”

“Yes.”

For some reason, Leah’s eyes narrowed at Medea, who eyed her equally suspiciously back. “Interesting,” she said, after a moment.

“She’s… just a cat, Leah.” Probably. Mercy reached down to stroke Medea’s head. “One who tolerates werewolves. Well. Mostly only Adam.”

Leah said nothing and plugged in her cell phone. As she did so, Mercy saw that she had several missed calls on her home screen notifications. Fourteen, to be precise. As she watched, the screen lit up again with another call from the Marrok.

Briskly, though she would obviously have also seen the phone call, Leah turned to the door, as if to leave.

Mercy pointed to the cell phone. “Aren’t you going to get that?”

“No.” Leah left, leaving Mercy staring at the screen. ‘Bran Cornick’ flashed repeatedly, then stopped. A second later, a text message came through, also from Bran, though the notifications weren’t set so that the message could be read. Another second, another message. Famously, Bran hated using cell phones and yet Mercy was witnessing more phone calls – assuming the fourteen others were also from him – and more messages than she had ever thought he would send to one person in a year, let alone, what, in the space of a day?

Taking a leap, Mercy guessed Bran and Leah were in the middle of something.

If you were going to hide out from the Marrok, the Columbia Basin Pack was pretty much the best place for that now. Bran had no authority over them, in a technical sense. Maybe if Leah had gone somewhere else, the Alpha would have felt obliged to notify Bran, particularly once she had made it clear she had arrived without his knowledge, as she had done to Mercy.

Whilst Mercy’s loyalties were definitely on Bran’s side, Adam was right – it wasn’t any of their business.

She returned to the kitchen, passing Aiden on the way. “Dinner was amazing,” she said, catching his arm to give it a squeeze. “Thank you again.”

Aiden looked pleased. “I’m going to learn how to make Sushi next,” he said, bounding down the stairs to his room. Moments later, she heard music, quickly smothered by the noise cancelling headphones they had bought him for Christmas.

In the kitchen, Leah was pouring hot water into a teapot that she must have dug up from somewhere and the scent of mint was filling the room. Adam looked up from a newspaper he had found to occupy himself and smiled, folding it when he saw her. “I’m going to head up for an early night. I have a call at six in the morning with Paris.”

Mercy winced. “Ouch. Okay.” He stood and kissed her.

Adam turned and gave Leah a sort of courtly head nodding gesture. Mercy didn’t often see her husband around other werewolf females, not the married-to-an-Alpha-ones, at least. It seemed to bring out all his old-fashioned mannerisms. “Goodnight, Leah. It was good seeing you.”

“You too, Adam,” Leah said, carrying the teapot to the table as if she was perfectly comfortable in Mercy's home.

Alone with Leah again, and sighing internally, Mercy took down two cups and saucers that they kept for tea drinkers and went to take a seat at her own table, half listening for Adam’s quiet tread upstairs. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched for the switch back from possessed Leah to the real Leah she knew. The one with the shark smile or the sneer. 

“I take it you do want to learn?” Leah asked, instead, sitting opposite her and pouring the tea.

Mercy nodded slowly. She had thought about it in between mouthfuls of carnitas and steak tacos and piles of guacamole and chips. “I do.”

“Good. Tell me first about your bonds. Pack, mating, whatever. What are they like?”

Mercy knew enough, at least, to know that each was specific to the individual. She described hers and as she did so, a slow smile spread across Leah’s face. “What?” she asked, narrowing her eyes, awaiting her derision.

Leah shrugged, lifted her cup, cradling it between her hands. “Most females have very literal interpretations of their bonds. Yours are similar to mine.”

That they might have anything in common didn’t sit well with Mercy. As a distraction, she sipped her own tea. It was lightly green and surprisingly pleasant. Leah must have gone into the yard to pick fresh mint from what remained of Christy’s herb garden.

“How much interaction do you have with the bond? When you are conscious,” Leah amended, as if she too knew of the otherness.

Mercy lifted and dropped a shoulder. “I tug on it, to get his attention. I can draw power from him, if I need to.” She chose not to describe the efforts she had gone to when she had been trying to save him from the witch’s curse.

Leah’s neatly arched dark eyebrows lifted. “And how do you do that?” She took another sip of her tea and put the cup down.

“Um.” Mercy tried to explain something she didn’t really know herself. “It’s just— kind of... there? I sort of picture it as it is in the otherness and grab hold. With my mind.”

Wow, that sounded lame but it was hard to explain something she didn’t understand.

Instead of mocking her, which would have been normal, Leah simply nodded. “And you would naturally never do anything violent to it, would you? You couldn’t squeeze it. Cut it. Try to break it.”

A shiver went through her. She remembered ripping at the closed bond, making it bleed, in her panic to get in contact with Adam. Mercy shook her head. “No. I tried something like that once. It’s… painful. It feels like I’m damaging it. It recovers, afterwards. I don’t think it permanently harms it.”

Leah continued to nod, as if none of this sounded bad or unnatural. “Sounds like it’s healthy, then. So, that’s the first thing we will address. Is Adam sleeping yet?”

Mercy checked using the bond, which was somnolent. “Yes.” Work was still busy and if Adam had an early call, he would be out like a light. That wasn’t to say that he wouldn’t wake up when she came to bed – they were still making up for lost time, after all – but mostly if Adam put his head down, he could be asleep in seconds. 

“Then, and I assure you he won’t feel this, I want you to grab hold of the mating bond and squeeze it tight. As tight as you possibly can. Like a hosepipe you’re trying to stop water from going through.”

Something in Mercy revolted. “I don’t want to do that.”

Leah pressed her lips together as if this was amusing but she was trying not to show it. “Try.”

Mercy clarified her position. “It doesn’t want me to do that.” Not with the mating bond open as it was. It had been different when Adam had closed it, when she had been desperate and panicked.

“No. _They_ don’t want you to do that.”

“They?”

She swayed her head from side to side, a considering gesture. “Adam. Adam’s wolf. The mating bond. It’s kind of a mixture. They like the control from one direction. It’s sub-conscious,” Leah amended, waving a hand around. She smiled, a big, wide smile. Her teeth were white and neat. “But with a little perseverance you can overcome it. Go on.”

The last felt like an order. Mercy didn’t like it, didn’t like being given orders in her own home. She also didn’t trust Leah.

“Why are you doing this?” Mercy asked, a burning question she’d had since the moment Leah had explained her ‘goodwill’ mission. Leah had never helped Mercy, not once. There had been no moments of kindness, no support – just the never-ending threat of death if she trod one hair out of line.

The shark smile came back, briefly, and then disappeared. Leah’s eyes were suddenly fathomless. Mercy had trouble meeting them so she glanced away. “Let’s just say I am very _invested_ in the success of your relationship.”

Truth. A weird truth but a truth nonetheless. Why on earth would Leah care if she and Adam were ‘successful’? It was so the opposite of everything she had ever understood about Leah’s attitudes to other couples and, indeed herself. She would have thought Leah would be vindictively glad if Mercy’s marriage failed. Proof that, yet again, Mercy was nothing compared to a werewolf female.

Frowning, Mercy clamped a mental hand down on the mating bond. And – against everything she felt she should be doing – squeezed.

Nothing happened. If anything, after a moment’s resistance, the bond suddenly… molded into her like putty. “Oh,” she said then, with sudden surprise, her head jerking back. “I can’t feel Adam.”

“And he can’t feel you.” Leah picked up her tea, toasted her silently. “That was easy, wasn’t it?”

Experimentally, Mercy released the bond. It sprung back as if nothing had happened. Suddenly she could feel Adam again, sleeping peacefully upstairs. She sat back in relief.

“How does he keep that up all the time?” She would have to concentrate to do that. As if she was doing particularly challenging math in her head. Adam just… went about his day like that?

“Leaving aside the practice he’s had on his pack bonds, he doesn’t squeeze it. He probably, depending on how he visualizes these things, cements it up or something. You can do that as well.” She narrowed her eyes. “For example, you said your people are all garlands? Christmas lights?”

She nodded.

“Try turning the electricity on and off.”

Mercy laughed. “Really?”

Leah shrugged. “Whatever works for you. It’s your connection.” She reached for the teapot again and poured Mercy some more tea before serving herself. The blue stone on her finger winked in the low lighting of the kitchen, catching Mercy’s eye. It was a big rock, surrounded by diamonds. She didn’t know enough about jewelry to determine what kind of quality. The diamonds on the separate wedding band went all the way around. This being Leah, it must have been an expensive set. 

She thought, momentarily, about the fifteen missed calls from Bran on Leah’s phone. Then she put it firmly aside. Not her business.

They both sat and drank their fresh tea for a little longer, Mercy mulling over what she had learnt. When she’d fed the pearl to the mating bond, she’d had to do so in the otherness. It had required a concentrated effort. ‘Using’ the bonds like Leah had just shown her in her day to day life hadn’t occurred to her. She had thought, she didn’t know, that maybe Adam was just more atuned to it. That they worked differently for him. Or that some instinct she’d never had before would kick-in and she’d get to grips with them better and suddenly know what to do.

“Can I damage the mating bond? If I do something wrong to it?” she asked.

“No. It would be a different story if it was an unhealthy bond,” Leah amended, clearly in the interest of imparting useful information. “Yours isn’t. With an unhealthy bond, you could snap it or break it.”

That was good to know.

“Do you have to… do anything to maintain a bond?” Mercy asked next, feeling as if she might as well go all-in with the questions now. She had no shame. She and Leah Cornick were besties, now.

Leah shook her head. “Not any more than you would have to maintain a relationship. It’s also very resilient. I have known mated couples who have been apart for several years with no discernable damage to the bond.”

“What _would_ damage it?”

“In a healthy bond - magic, as you have no doubt already discovered. Betrayal of trust.” Leah pulled a face, scrunching her forehead. “Not much else than that, really.”

“If one partner stopped loving the other?”

This got Mercy a head-shake. “Wouldn’t have any effect. The mating bond has nothing to do with love. It’s trust and acceptance.” She exhaled, heavily. “Duty.”

Duty. Mercy pondered the wedding rings on Leah’s finger once again. _Duty_ was what she thought held together Bran and Leah. That they trusted each other… that Bran trusted _Leah_. She didn’t know what to make of that. 

Quietly, Mercy voiced a thought she had kept right at the back of her mind, closed off and secret. “And what if either party just decided, for whatever reason, that they didn’t want to be mates any longer?” That it had been one hundred years and they were sick of each other, perhaps. Or wanted different things from life. Though Leah said love had nothing to do with it, she was with Adam because she loved him. She couldn’t imagine _not_ loving Adam but it was always possible that something could happen. He had loved Christy once.

“Then they could end it. Voluntarily. But you would both have to want it. I’ve often thought,” Leah said, her tone changing to something more contemplative, “that there should be some form of written agreement that couples review prior to a bond bargain. The number of women I’ve met who have entered into such a binding, not knowing the full scope of the decision, must be into their hundreds by now. All we have is an almost pointless ceremony at full moon which, I'm told, is basically just nonsense to satisfy the romantics.”

Leah didn’t seem to want a response to this, just drifted off into her own thoughts and left Mercy to her wonderings about what would happen if one day Adam didn’t want her any more. She tried to shake it off. It was an old fear. And ridiculous given what they had just faced together. Trust and acceptance, Leah had said. She trusted and accepted Adam and he her. She _had_ to hold on to that faith.

“I should check my phone,” Leah said, abruptly getting up.

Mercy risked a cheeky comment. “How many more calls from him do you think you’ve had?”

“Oh, another three or four, perhaps? The real question is whether he’s started using all caps in his messages yet.” Leah’s laugh continued down the hallway towards the office as if ignoring the Marrok of the wolves wasn’t somehow a highly risky business.

*

Mercy didn’t find out if Bran had moved into all caps because Leah didn’t say. She wasn’t gone long enough to reply or make a phone call, Mercy knew that for sure. Not that she particularly expected her to.

She was _insanely_ curious about what was going on.

To cover this, at Mercy’s suggestion they moved to the living room and she put the TV on, mostly as a backdrop. She found a nature show that served as a nearly silent third party to one of the strangest tête-à-têtes of Mercy’s life. Leah had another beer and Mercy made herself another pot of the mint tea.

They sat on the couch, a space big enough for a wolf lying down between them.

Mercy cleared her throat, wanting to interrupt the strangely comfortable silence. “Is the mating bond and, I guess, the pack bonds – are they sentient? In a way?”

“They’re magically intuitive. They want to work with you for the betterment of the pack.” Leah held up the beer bottle, wiggled the neck to make her point. “Oh, but what the ‘betterment’ of the pack means is heavily influenced by the Alpha. A good Alpha, with good instincts, will have healthier bonds than one with less pure motives. That can warp them.”

Interesting.

“Do you want me to tell you how to break it when he closes down the bond on you?” This was said vaguely, as if Mercy’s answer was of only casual interest to Leah.

Without hesitation, Mercy nodded. “Yes.”

Leah didn’t take her eyes away from the TV. “When he closes the bond down his end, it means he’s come up with a way to seal it off. In whatever way works for his interpretation of the bond. To break through that seal, you have to find the right thing that will shatter it. For instance – if he’s cemented it closed, you would send a bulldozer. Or a wrecking ball.” She turned her head and smiled. “In this case, you have to imagine _his_ end of the bond, not yours. That’s the difference.”

Mercy frowned. “I don’t know what Adam’s bonds look like.”

“Then, Mercedes, you have to involve yourself enough to find out,” Leah said, lifting her beer bottle to her lips.

Mercy blew out a breath. Adam would be surprised at her sudden interest. And to ask him, she thought honesty would compel her to tell him _why_ she was suddenly interested. _Honey, it’s so that the next time you decided you’re ‘better off’ without me in your mind, or you in mine, I can break through._ Hmm. That was sure to go down well.

“What do you do for Bran?”

The Marrok had once told her that the bonds were like music to him. She could only guess how he would ‘seal off’ music. Maybe noise cancelling headphones? No, too modern. Perhaps a steel-enforced closed door. Or a theatre curtain. Yes. That seemed more his style. 

“It really depends on how annoyed I am,” Leah said, smiling a secret smile. 

“Are you annoyed with him now?” she couldn’t help but ask.

“No,” came the short, truthful reply. 

“Is he annoyed with you?”

For the first time, Mercy wondered if there was something else going on in Aspen Creek. That Bran wasn’t calling just to find out where his mate was but because there was a problem Leah was avoiding. It seemed out of character. If there was only one positive thing Mercy could say about Leah it was that her loyalty to Bran’s people was impeccable.

But then it was out of character coming to Mercy’s city and teaching her about mating bonds. So was sitting on her couch and drinking beer and watching TV.

This was the longest time she had ever spent with Leah. Heck, if she discounted Jesse, it was the longest conversation she’d had with a woman since she’d moved to the Tri-Cities.

She really needed to actively spend more one-on-one time with the other women in the pack, Mercy thought.

“He’s worked out where I am, now. He’s… concerned,” Leah said eventually, and there was something dark in her tone. Something that reminded Mercy of the times Leah had stalked her around Aspen Creek in her wolf form when Mercy was on the way home from school, perhaps. Or off to meet friends, the few friends she’d had.

Upstairs, Adam slept on. On Mercy’s left, there was a heavy lampshade, good enough to daze a werewolf, even one with Leah’s strength. If she was quick enough. “Oh.”

Leah grunted, as if she had read Mercy’s mind. Or smelled her fear. “Not in that way, Mercy. Have no fear. I meant what I said. He’s concerned about what I might tell you.”

“About the mating bond?” She was surprised. Was it really such a big deal?

“No. Something else.” Dragging herself from the TV, Leah turned to look at her, her eyes narrowed with thought, and then seemed to change the subject completely. “Adam declared you his mate before he courted you properly, didn’t he?”

Mercy nodded, thrown by the change in direction. “If by ‘courted’ you mean ‘dated’, then sure.” Apparently this was a charming piece of information that everyone knew now. Yippee.

“I _meant_ courted but I suppose… Adam is quite young.” She turned her head back to face the screen. “Maybe he’s less traditional than I would have thought. There’s a degree of playfulness when a werewolf courts. Particularly if the male is significantly more powerful than the female.”

“Adam was plenty playful,” Mercy said, not really having any idea why she felt she needed to defend Adam’s credentials in this area. Maybe he had been courting her and she just hadn’t known it.

“I’m sure he is.” Leah’s voice was patronizing. Mercy bristled. “Did Samuel play tricks on you? When you were a teenager?”

Every time Mercy thought the evening’s weirdness had plateaued, Leah seemed to introduce a new layer. “Not… really.” He had teased her, she thought. It was hard to picture now without the context that maturity, and reality, had given her. Had Sam teased her or had she been young and easily flustered by the attention of her crush, a dominant werewolf? Hard to tell.

The only tricks that were played in that pack had been the ones Mercy had pulled on Leah and Bran. Or mostly just Bran, towards the end, who had certainly given as good as he had got. 

A strange, fleeting thought crossed her mind, then – quickly dismissed as utterly ridiculous. Completely and utterly ridiculous. Perverse, even. Embarrassing that she’d even thought it.

Mercy glanced to her right, saw Leah was watching her again, a searching but otherwise unreadable expression on her face.

“Well,” Mercy said, looking away and pushing down the unexpected butterfly sensation in her stomach that had suddenly manifested. She forced a yawn. She wanted to be with Adam, _right now_. “It’s late and if Adam’s up early, then I will be too. You know how it is.”

There was a short but noticeably pause before Leah spoke. “I do indeed. Thank you for a lovely evening,” she said, rising gracefully but hurriedly, as if she had been waiting for Mercy to invite her to leave for some time.

“No, ah, thank you,” Mercy managed. Because she was _polite_ , dammit. “Really. It’s been… illuminating.” Baffling. Oddly emotional. But illuminating.

“Let me know how everything goes. Oh – I should get my cell phone,” Leah said, snapping her fingers and diverting down to the office again. Mercy decided not to follow her, instead stood in their bright kitchen and contemplated the dark window out into their drive, seeing her own reflection and the deep lines on her forehead as she frowned.

She shook her head as that stray, ridiculous thought tried to make itself known again. Bran wouldn’t—? No. Absolutely not. _No_.

Very, _very_ firmly, she put that thought and every thought that went with it away, never to be looked at again.

Leah returned. She waved her phone, a triumphant smile on her face now. “We have achieved all caps.”

Mercy swallowed down a lump in her throat. “Yikes,” she said.

She walked Leah out to her car but Leah didn’t immediately get into the driver’s seat. She looked back, instead, at Mercy’s home, the front lit up by the lights that came on at night. She smiled, faintly. “I knew Christy, you know,” she said.

Mercy’s sneer was reflexive.

“Yes, a dreadful woman,” Leah agreed with a little knowing laugh, as if female jealousy and dislike was something she understood well. Mercy didn’t like that comparison either.

Leah’s penetrating eyes met Mercy’s and she fought the impulse to lower them, as Leah had trained her to do. “If she’d had the facility, Christy would misuse the information I’ve just given you.”

“I won’t.” Mercy was not Christy. She already planned to talk to Adam about it. What she’d learnt, what Leah had told her that evening, was about equaling the playing field, not about providing weapons to fight with her husband. Maybe she’d never need to use what she knew now.

“Good. Balance is important,” Leah said, getting into her car. She paused, leaning over into the passenger side to grab her purse. It was, unless Mercy was very much mistaken, a Birkin. Even she knew what a Birkin was. From within this unspeakably expensive bag, she pulled out a white card and held it out to Mercy.

Mercy took it. It had a cell phone number on it. No name. Years ago, Bran had given her a card much like it.

“Call me, if you have any questions.”

 _Like heck I will,_ Mercy thought, pushing the card into her back pocket.

Leah closed the driver side door and turned on the engine. The window wound down. “Warren, your third? He’s mated to a human, isn’t he?”

Mercy nodded. “Kyle.”

Leah’s eyebrows went up. “You should talk to him. Tell him what I told you. That’s your responsibility as Adam’s mate.”

The idea made Mercy uncomfortable, as did most of the things that were ‘supposed’ to be her responsibility. Then, too, she thought that Kyle – smart, redoubtable Kyle – deserved to know, just as Mercy did. So she nodded. “All right.”

Then Leah smiled again, the shark smile, her normal smile. “Look at that. No one died. Wouldn’t he be proud?”

*

It was actually a couple of days before she was able to tell Adam about her strange evening with Leah. The phone call with Paris had led to a quick trip to Washington on something hush-hush that made Adam’s lips press into a white line of irritation. It was Saturday evening before she saw him again and, initially, there were no words required in their reunion.

Afterwards, Mercy lay on top of him, his hand stroking her spine, the mating bond humming contentedly between them. She was too lazy to drag a sheet over her cooling body and snuggled instead against her husband’s werewolf warmth.

She turned her head, so her chin rested on his chest and gazed at his beloved face. “Shall I show you what Leah was here for?”

Adam opened one blue eye. “Uh-oh,” he said.

Mercy took hold of the mating bond and, ignoring its whine of resistance when previously she would have heeded it, thinking she was doing something wrong, she squeezed it tight. Suddenly the contentment, the humming pleasure of their coupling, ceased. Her mind was quiet.

“Oh,” Adam said softly, opening both eyes now.

She let go and felt through the joy of the returning bond the flood of various emotions from her mate. Confusion, surprise, and, yes, annoyance. A very Alpha male _possessive_ annoyance. Huh. Leah had been right. Not something she had ever had cause to acknowledge before.

Because he was Adam, and he loved her, she felt him wrestle his feelings into something more positive and befitting the Twenty-First Century. She smiled as his face, relaxed and transparent in the safe space of their bedroom, twisted and pulled as he worked his way through it. “I guess, I didn’t know you could do that,” he said, sheepishly. “If I’d known… I’d have told you.”

“Leah said,” she still couldn’t believe these words were leaving her mouth, “that female werewolves are taught these things by their Alpha’s mate. I asked Honey, who agreed it was true.” And said so in tones of a kind of nostalgic wonder, as if it was something she hadn’t really thought of in a long time. She had then given Mercy a sharp-eyed look and asked if she needed help. It had only been thanks to Leah that Mercy had been able to, truthfully, say no.

“I always thought it was instinct.” His forehead crumpled. “And that it was just a bit hit-and-miss with you.”

This had also been what Mercy had thought. Or perhaps allowed herself to think. “Maybe a mixture of instinct and good old-fashioned werewolf chauvinism,” she suggested wryly. “And a little bit of laziness on my part.”

“And mine, too,” he said, fairly. Adam’s hand, which had paused on her back when she had closed the bond, started stroking again. This time he applied a little more pressure. _Interested_ pressure. “Someone should write a book.”

“Mmm,” Mercy thought, turning her head to rest her cheek on his chest again as Adam’s hands wandered, using the very edges of his nails to tease her. Goosebumps rose on her arms, the hairs on the back of her neck tingling with pleasure.

“What else did she say?”

She arched her back as Adam’s clever fingers found a particularly delightful spot to scrape past. “Maybe we could talk about this tomorrow?”

His chest shook with silent laughter and then he rolled her over to kiss her. “I think that’s reasonable.”

In the morning, over breakfast, they did discuss it. Mercy tackled the real heart of the matter. “If I understand your manifestation of the pack bonds, apparently I can work my way through when you close them off to me,” she said.

Adam paused in his chewing, a forkful of eggs held in midair. She had to laugh at his expression of exquisite discomfort. He cleared his throat and then picked up his glass, took a big, fortifying gulp of orange juice.

“I think the point is, _knowing_ how is different than actually doing it,” she told him, waving her own empty fork in the air. “Because I trust you to use your power wisely. And you should be able to trust me.”

“I get that,” he said, slowly. 

Mercy narrowed her eyes at her mate. “You don’t like it, though.”

“Noooooo,” Adam said, the sheepish face from last night returning.

She ate a few mouthfuls of her own eggs, waiting for him to decide what he thought, what he wanted to do, how he wanted to approach this. She expected this to be a long conversation.

“Probably a grenade would do it,” Adam said, eventually, surprising her. It pretty much sounded as if he had to force the words out, though.

 _Blow up the bond_ , Bran had said. Mercy nearly rolled her eyes. He _had_ meant it literally. Of course. Her pearl had worked, to a degree, and so had her words. But the circumstances had been different. Adam had been being attacked and she had been forced to sink into her otherness to do it. Normally werewolves weren’t subtle creatures. 

“Maybe we could practice?” she suggested, brightly, having never suggested they practice anything with the bond. Except for the few – sometimes overwhelming – times in bed.

Adam blew out a breath. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “This all seems… very fair.” He was gripping his fork very hard.

She loved him so much. “In everything there is balance,” Mercy replied, pressing her lips together to hold back her laughter.

Her husband stuck his tongue out at her and then, reluctantly, smiled. “Who would have thought.”

“I know, right?” _Leah_. Of all people. Mercy shook her head. She glanced out of the window, at the blue skies of another fine day. “I’m still awaiting the plague of locusts.”

Adam turned to look himself. Through the mating bond, she could feel his amusement as he pretended to survey the horizon. “If there are locusts, do we still have a practice?”

“ _Yes_ ,” she said firmly. She stole a piece of bacon from his plate. “Eat up.”

**Author's Note:**

> One of the things that has always bothered me in both A&O and Mercy Thompson is that both Anna and Mercy seem to passively, magically 'allow' their mates to shut them out of the mating bond. It always seems to be very one-way, with this attitude of the men doing it 'because we know better'. Then I thought - well Anna's a 'new' werewolf and Mercy isn't even one. Briggs has even written that Mercy is (out of character) content to 'leave it' to Adam. In any case, neither of their werewolf partners have ever been mated before - so maybe they're all just clueless? So this is my fix-it.


End file.
